Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Process improvement in the antibiotic industry.

Year

Process improvement also occurs in the antibiotic industry. This example shows how microbiologists improve the process levels (concentrations) in production of an antibiotic over time. The slide is from an old talk by Arnold Demain of MIT.

The point it that many different experiments, such as genetic selections for improved microbe strains, and changes to growth media based on physiology experiments, allow process costs to be driven down over time.

Can you suggest examples of different biotechnology process improvements from previous published scientific work and document and explain how they were achieved?

There are so many different products to chose from, and so many different ways of reducing costs of production, so let me have your ideas in the comments. Let's work them up together for a series of Microbe Pundit Posts to share around.

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About Me

Interested in correcting misuse of biology, helping people benefit from innovation.I teach courses in food science, food safety, biotechnology and microbiology at the University of Melbourne. My Bachelor Degree is in biochemistry and my Ph.D. applied molecular genetics. Thesis topic -- production of an animal feed supplement using genetically manipulated bacteria.---My recent publications have been on epidemics caused by bacterial pathogens, published in high-ranking journals. My current area of research is food risk analysis and management. The most important of these risks are microbes in food and microbial products that are toxic.